The skills difference between Sales & BD

What is Business Development?

Oh no! Robots are taking SDR jobs...

Yay! Now they can be BDRs and make 10% - 20% more.

Ever notice some industries don't have entry-level BD people?

For example, high end accounting, management consulting, etc.

In the BD-BOK I created the CASM model to explain this phenomenon.

People often use B2B or B2C to describe Go-To-Market (GTM) characteristics.

For example...

B2C = short sales cycle...False, ever bought a house?

B2B = long sales cycle...False, ever bought paper for your office?

B2B or B2C characterizes demographic, firmographic, etc of your client.

"Intent Threshold" better characterizes GTM.

Here's how it works...

High Intent Threshold (HIT)

HIT requires high Prospector (BD) skills to address complex products and build a trust early in the relationship.

HIT requires low Sales skills because of less complexity. In this situation, a highly skilled Prospector addresses most of the complexity during the Activation Phase (BD) before Conversion Phase (Sales).

Examples: High-end accounting firms, management consulting, etc.

Low Intent Threshold (LIT)

LIT requires highly skilled Sales because their low-skill Prospector teammates engage a high volume of leads and book prospect's meeting with sales.

LIT requires highly skilled Sales to efficiently and effectively convert the high volume of prospects into a customer.

Examples: SaaS, or VAR business models.

Okay, so how do we explain the higher pay for BD people?

I overlayed CASM with Andy Hoar's “Seller Archetypes” from 2015.

It forms the Customer Acquisition Team Archetypes (CATA) model.

CATA shows skills required for the 4 archetypes.

1. Explainer
Low skill Sales simply finds and explains product information so HIT prospects can make a purchase.

2. Order Taker
Prospector with low skills quickly moves prospect into Conversion Phase because the prospect already declared intent and ability to purchase.

3. Navigator
Highly skilled Sales finds information for the prospect and recommends next best actions since the prospect already has intent and ability.

4. Consultant
Prospector provides expertise to help the prospect solve complex problems. In addition, these prospects have complex buying processes the prospector must be able to understand and manage during the Activation Phase.

Andy predicted Consultant archetypes would grow by 10%, and all other archetypes would decrease by 73% because the rapid growth of technology enables prospects to easily conduct self-navigated journeys and automates low-skill sales.

This might explain why BD roles have the top fastest growing jobs and higher pay compared to Marketing and Sales.

Tony Gray, BDP
Author of the Business Development Body of Knowledge

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